STATISTICS

Statistics is an inherent part of UNCTAD. Being the United Nations’ focal point for the integrated treatment of trade and development and the interrelated issues in the areas of finance, technology, investment and sustainable development, UNCTAD compiles, validates and processes a wide range of data collected from national and international sources.

In focus

Economic Development in Africa Report 2017: "Tourism for transformative and inclusive growth."

Tourism is a dynamic and fast growing sector in Africa; it boasted virtually uninterrupted growth from 1995 to 2014. It has become a key contributor to the continent's GDP and generates more than 21 million jobs.
And importantly, intra-African tourism is rising. Data on intra-African and intra-regional tourism have been specifically compiled for the 2017 Economic development in Africa Report.

Statistics capacity building

UNCTAD assists national statistical agencies in developing and transition countries in their data collection and dissemination efforts. In cooperation with UN agencies, development banks and other international organisations, such as Eurostat. UNCTAD coordinates technical cooperation activities with donors and other organisations to avoid duplication of work and to encourage complementarity and synergy. For this purpose UNCTAD contributes to the Partner Report on Support to Statistics (PRESS) maintained by Paris21, which provides a snapshot of support to statistical capacity development worldwide and, thus, is a valuable tool for collaboration building among statistical international organisations.

Latest statistical publications

Explore UNCTAD statistics in our data centre, compare key indicators from countries all over the world in our Country Profiles and discover a selection of key facts in our infrographic library.

Latest key facts

Commodity Price Indices, February 2017: Over the last 12 months the UNCTAD commodity price index has gone up by one fifth. Prices for minerals, ores and metals have even increased by one third (year-on-year growth: 34.2%; month-on-month growth: 3.7%).

Trade in services in 2016 Q4:In the 4th quarter of 2016, year-on-year growth of trade in services was modest (+0.2 %). This reflects a sudden downturn of trade in other services and goods-related services, while trade in travel continued rising and the decrease of trade in transport slowed down.

International merchandise trade in 2016: world merchandise trade decreased further. Annual growth of world exports: -3.2%.

News

​UNCTAD Chief Statistician, Mr. Steve MacFeely, in his role as a director of the International Statistical Literacy Programme chaired the Special Topic Session entitled 'The Challenges of Improving Statistical Literacy in Developing Countries' (STS 050).

UNCTAD delivers technical training on measuring and evaluation of UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development to Tanzania and Zanzibar, June 29 - July 6, 2017. Statisticians and evaluators from UNCTAD ran a series of seminars and technical workshops in Tanzania and Zanzibar.

​Steve MacFeely, Head of Statistics and Information at UNCTAD, presented ated at the Innovate 4 Water conference organized by Waterpreneurs, WaterVent and the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva on 8 & 9 June, 2017.